In this Jan. 28, 2018, a plume of smoke rises from inside Syria, during Turkish forces bombardment, on the Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin, Syria, as seen from the border with Syria, in Kilis, Turkey.(Photo: Can Erok, AP)

REYHANLI, Turkey — When tanks and airstrikes destroyed his home in a village in northern Syria, Hani Barad fled with his family to safety in a nearby town.

Hani Barad’s three children would go outside to play only to come running home in fear every time a plane flew overhead. “They were scared. That wasn’t life,” Barad said.

When he was caught criticizing the Syrian government, Barad was arrested, tortured and jailed for two months. When he was released, fighting between rebels and government forces began to escalate.

Again, he packed up his children and fled north, this time just over the Turkish border.

Now the war has again encroached on their place of refuge. This time, it’s two allies of the United States — a Kurdish-Syrian rebel group and the Turkish government — slugging it out on the Turkish border.

“We don’t want that again, if we have to leave here, we will leave,” Barad said.

The latest front in Syria's nearly seven year civil war has not only rattled Turkish border towns hit by rockets and crossfire. It has also further strained relations between Turkey and the U.S. and raised questions about the effectiveness of the U.S. strategy to root out Islamic State militants in Syria.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid out a new strategy Jan. 17 in a speech at Stanford University. He committed the U.S. to an open-ended troop presence in northeast Syria. The goals: To fight Islamic State and groups linked to al-Qaeda, counter Iranian influence in the region and get Syria’s President Bashar Assad out of power.

The U.S. plan includes further cooperation with Syrian Kurdish militants, something that has infuriated Turkey and sparked its operation against Syrian-Kurdish militants in Afrin.

Analysts such as Faysal Itani, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, doubt whether such an objective is possible.

Troops and aid committed to by the Trump administration to Syria are not nearly enough to achieve such lofty goals, Itani said. Refugee returns would require expensive, large-scale reconstruction and diplomacy will not get Assad to step aside, he said. If the U.S. does not resolve its differences with Turkey over Syria's Kurdish militias, basic stability is even more difficult.

The U.S. has not committed enough troops or money to stabilize the country and pave the way for a peaceful democratic transition, Itani said. In addition, the U.S. must navigate the demands of countries on Syria’s borders, such as Turkey, to get regional stability.

On Friday, after a two day visit to Ankara by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the two countries agreed to open dialogue in an effort to mend ties damaged by their difference over Kurdish militants in Syria.

Tillerson said at a press conference with foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, that Turkey and the U.S. had hit a "bit of a crisis point in the relationship," but that the countries would "act together from this point forward."

Still, no agreement was made to solve the differences between the two countries and Tillerson and Cavusoglu reiterated their conflicting stances.

"Our worries were in direct relation to direct threats that we were receiving about the YPG attacking our citizens, because our people are dying," said Cavusoglu, He said around 100 Turkish citizens and Syrians were killed by missiles or by arms coming from Afrin.

The battle raging in the northern Syrian region of Afrin pits Turkey, a NATO ally, against the People’s Protection Unit (YPG), a Kurdish-Syrian group supported by the U.S. that has seized control of large swaths of land in Syria from Assad's government.

While the U.S. sees the YPG forces as a helpful ally and important part of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the fight against Assad and the Islamic State, the Turkish government sees the YPG as part of a troublesome Kurdish separatist group that has waged a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey.

The Turkish government blames the YPG for the deaths of seven civilians. Scores of others have been injured in more than 100 attacks on southern Turkey. The YPG denies targeting the civilians.

An end to tensions between Turkey and the U.S. seems distant because the countries have different priorities, said Hassan Hassan, a senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. While the U.S. is most concerned with defeating the Islamic State, Turkey is most concern with the YPG, he said.

At the same time, the Kurdish fighters of the YPG claim the U.S. isn’t doing enough to defend the YPG in Afrin from Turkish attacks, Itani noted. Recently, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Edogan threatened to attack Manbij, the U.S.-controlled territory in eastern Syria where American troops are stationed alongside Kurdish rebels.

That instability in Afrin is creating more refugees. The United Nations says the most recent fighting has displaced between 15,000 and 30,000 people.

Syrian refugees like the Barads now account for a third of Reyhanli’s population and they are running out of places to go. Hani Barad’s entire extended family — 12 people — spent two weeks hunkered down in a four-bedroom apartment.

Barad’s brother-in-law Mohammed Rahhal stayed there with his mother, Khadija Gazal, 67, after fighting near his own apartment became too loud.

“It sounded like explosions all the time and the house was shaking,” said Rahhal, who eventually plans to move to Slovenia to be with his wife. “My mom is scared and doesn’t want to stay there.”

Rahhal’s sister Eatimad Rahhal, five months pregnant with her fourth child, missed her last medical appointment and her children were kept home from school.